It was senior night, sort of, for the Three Rivers girl’s basketball team and for the entire first quarter, Bingaman played his six seniors, rotating out and making sure all six got playing time.

And they didn’t just go through the motions — the seniors for Three Rivers play important roles and Bingaman knows he will need his entire team to contribute moving forward as the tournament nears.

Three Rivers beat visiting Berrien Springs 64-20.

“It’s important for us because you’re not going to have your best players every night that will perform,” Bingaman said. “Other teams will work to shut down your attack and the great thing about basketball is any night a player off the bench can come in and play good minutes. It’s always nice to have girls that have some confidence coming off the bench.”

The Lady Cat seniors— Curstin Holloman, Bre Lester, Marissa Wyngarden, JoAnna Hampsten, Nicki Bennett and Clautia Pou — pushed the lead to 12-5 after one quarter of action. They were able to force turnovers and Pou connected on two 3-pointers.

“Being the last regular season divisional game, in the past we’ve always started our seniors and let them play the whole first quarter,” Bingaman said. “Our girls tonight did a nice job of being active.”

To start the second quarter, the Three Rivers normal starting lineup took to the floor and wasted no time continuing what was started in the opening eight minutes. The Lady Cats got layups and key shots around the basket from both Teagan Reeves and Linsey Masnari.

The Three Rivers lead, already in double figures, ballooned to 20 quickly and the Lady Cats led 32-9 at halftime.

Berrien Springs turned it over 32 times and scored in single digits all four quarters.

It got worse as Three Rivers held a 22-5 advantage in the third and led 54-14 after three quarters. The Lady Cats held a 10-6 advantage in the fourth.

Reeves led all scorers with 14 while Masnari tossed in 12. Pou had nine points and seven rebounds, Hampsten had six points while Lester chipped in four points and had five assists.

Cory Sanders tossed in five points, Holly Hines had four points, Bennett had three points and three assists, Kimmy Sibert had three points while Holloman and Wyngarden each had two points. Alicia Schmidtendorff had two steals.

Three Rivers will take on Vicksburg tonight on the road.

“They always push us tough and we need to be in tournament mode right now,” Bingaman said. “We’ve got some good games to prepare us for the tournament coming up. I think because we played multiple rotations tonight we won’t have a fatigue issue tomorrow which is nice when you play back-to-back nights. These girls just want to play. They love to play and their competitive.”

Page 2 of 2 - TR boys win

Three Rivers’ boy’s basketball team picked up a 54-49 win over Berrien Springs Monday.

It was a slow start offensively as the Shamrocks led 10-9 after one and 23-14 at halftime. Three Rivers had a big third and fourth quarter, out-scoring Berrien Springs 21-13 and 19-13, respectively.

Alex Cottingham led with 13 points and nine rebounds while Brady Reeves and Trenton Karle each had 11. Ryan Satkoski added eight, Anderson Goff and Connor Smith both had four points and Corry Brown added three points.